Sublime

He became convinced that ordinary commercial financing could be done for a service charge plus an insurance fee amounting to much less than the current rates of interest charged by banks, whose rates were based on supply and demand, treating money as a commodity rather than as a sovereign state’s means of exchange.

EBay had an enormous advantage over the competition that it only then, under challenge, was coming to appreciate: a nicely balanced critical mass of sellers and buyers in each of hundreds of categories. This delicate balance had been achieved through the natural evolution of the eBay ecosystem, without the intervention of any guiding hand. If in an